Bryant Walker Smith is an assistant professor in the School of Law and (by courtesy) in the School of Engineering at the University of South Carolina. He is also an affiliate scholar at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School, an adjunct clinical professor at the University of Michigan Law School, a member of the US Department of Transportation's Advisory Committee on Automation in Transportation, the chair of the Emerging Technology Law Committee of the Transportation Research Board of the National Academies, the reporter to the Uniform Law Commission's Drafting Committee on Highly Automated Vehicles, the chair of the Planning Task Force for the On-Road Automated Vehicle Standards Committee of the Society of Automotive and Aerospace Engineers, a faculty affiliate of the Rule of Law Collaborative, and a member of the New York Bar.

Bryant's research focuses on issues of risk and trust in new technologies, especially automated driving systems, unmanned aerial systems, and other transportation technologies. As an internationally recognized expert on the law of driverless vehicles, Bryant taught the first-ever course on this topic (as well as the first course on hyperloops) and is regularly consulted by government, industry, and media. His publications are available at newlypossible.org

Before joining the University of South Carolina, Bryant led the legal aspects of automated driving program at Stanford University, clerked for the Hon. Evan J. Wallach at the United States Court of International Trade, and worked as a fellow at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. He holds both an LL.M. in International Legal Studies and a J.D. (cum laude) from New York University School of Law and a B.S. in civil engineering from the University of Wisconsin. Prior to his legal career, Bryant worked as a transportation engineer.

Following Uber’s fatal crash in Arizona, Governor Doug Ducey is attracting attention for what he did and did not do. This is not surprising; as I noted in 2016, Arizona's governor decided to embrace Uber’s vision, for better or for worse. This discussion, however, tends to elide the important question of his actual legal authority.

My previous post on the House and Senate automated driving bills (HB 3388 and SB 1885) concluded by noting that, in addition to the federal government, states and the municipalities within them also play an important role in regulating road safety.

Bills being considered by Congress deserve our attention—but not our full attention. To wit: When it comes to safety-related regulation of automated driving, existing law is at least as important as the bills currently in Congress (HB 3388 and SB 1885).

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Abstract

This Article focuses on one cyberphysical domain — automated driving — to methodically analyze the so-called liability problem. It considers how automated driving could affect product liability, how product liability could affect automated driving, and how each could advance or impede the prevention of injury and the compensation of victims.

At the outset, it's not clear to me what Silicon Valley is and isn't — or why that matters. Companies like Google are often contrasted with companies like General Motors, and yet, according to an automotive industry group, automakers spend over $100 billion every year on research and development worldwide. R&D is a form of tech innovation. Energy companies, pharmaceutical firms and financial institutions are also technological powerhouses. Innovation is central to telecommunications, defense and health care.

With the recent announcement, the US Department of Transportation is enthusiastically embracing automated driving. It’s saying that self-driving vehicles are coming in some form (or many forms) and that the agency can play a role not only in supervising but also in assisting this transportation transformation. The DOT is recognizing the wide range of relevant technologies, applications, and business models and is striving to address them more quickly and flexibly through its wide range of prospective and retrospective regulatory tools.

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"“I think law gets blamed too often,” says Bryant Walker Smith, a legal scholar with the University of South Carolina School of Law who studies self-driving vehicles.

“I don’t think the crashes have changed the approaches of the developers or the regulators,” Walker Smith says, but it’s easy to imagine that increased scrutiny encouraged Audi to keep its new system out of the US—at least for now."

"Bryant Walker Smith, a law professor at the University of South Carolina who studies driverless-car regulations, similarly welcomes the proposals from Mobileye and Voyage, but warns that it is too soon for regulators to “calcify dynamic conversations that are fundamentally technical in nature”.

"Bryant Walker Smith, a self-driving car expert and law professor at the University of South Carolina, said in an email that the report by The Information raised the question of whether Uber’s “software might have detected something but misclassified as something other than a human (which could include determining that the probability of that something being a human was low).”

"The lack of transparency about the workings of sensors, logic processors, mapping systems and other driverless technology, like the debate over robot-car regulation, could shape public perception of the nascent industry, said Bryant Walker Smith, a law professor at the University of South Carolina.

"Essentially, [the public will be] looking to see whether these companies are trustworthy," he said"

"Not to mention its track record. “It’s not just being able to show what happened but being able to show that the data should be believed,” says Bryant Walker Smith, a law professor at the University of South Carolina who studies driverless car regulations. “And then having the resources on all sides—that’s government investigators, plaintiffs, even defendant companies—to be able to analyze that data, understand it, and model it.”"

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Attendees will hear leading speakers, participate in interactive breakout sessions, and network with key innovators in this exciting field. Don't miss what's in store for the Automated Vehicles Symposium 2016.

The University of Washington School of Law is delighted to announce a public workshop on the law and policy of artificial intelligence, co-hosted by the White House and UW’s Tech Policy Lab. The event places leading artificial intelligence experts from academia and industry in conversation with government officials interested in developing a wise and effective policy framework for this increasingly important technology. The event is free and open to the public but requires registration. -

The Federal Trade Commission held a one-day public workshop on January 19, 2016, 9 am - 5:30 pm, to explore competition and related issues in the context of state regulation of motor vehicle distribution, and to promote more informed analysis of how these regulations affect businesses and consumers.

The University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute and Toyota invite you to attend "Leadership in Transportation: New Perspectives on Safe and Sustainable Transportation," a series of informative and engaging conversations with leaders in transportation.

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Self-driving cars – long the dream of science fiction, are closer to reality than you might think. In fact they’ve already traveled more than one million miles along public highways and bi-ways. Still, there are challenges down the road for the self-driving car, including technical, legal, and psychological, as people take their hands off wheel.

"CCTV America’s Michelle Makori interviewed Bryant Walker Smith, assistant professor in the School of Law and School of Engineering at the University of South Carolina, about how self-driving cars can change the way people travel."

“You can look forward to automation as a similar set of local and national tensions and developments and opportunities,” said Bryant Walker Smith. Smith was comparing the early days of broadband and its organic development to what we are seeing with vehicle automation. He brings a unique perspective on this topic, with both a transportation engineering and legal background. Read more at: http://viodi.com/2014/08/15/autonomous-autos-and-the-law/